


Move It to the Bed

by night_reveals



Series: Thursday Night Specials [2]
Category: Grimm (TV)
Genre: Barebacking, Bloodplay, Consensual Possession, Cunnilingus, F/M, Heterosexual Sex, Knotting, Light BDSM, M/M, Safe Sane and Consensual, Scent Marking, Submission, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-11
Updated: 2013-07-04
Packaged: 2017-11-11 22:47:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/483710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/night_reveals/pseuds/night_reveals
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After last Thursday, Nick and Juliette decide to get Monroe into their bed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story won't make sense without first reading "Quality Time". 
> 
> Posting unbeta'ed.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick wakes up and talks to Juliette about the night before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A link contained within is NSFW and depicts [story spoiler ahead] an actual canine's knot in a non-sexual setting. It is contained for illustrative purposes; if you don't wish/can't click the link, simply know the above and that section will make sense.

The dawn sunlight streams in through their wide bay windows, glancing off the cold ceramic tiles of the kitchen and straight into Nick’s eyes. He covers his face with a hand, rubbing it through his kinked hair, trying to unknot it as he shuffles around the kitchen in fuzzy orange house slippers a few sizes too small. He pours coffee (Juliette is a goddess), and ignores the looming knowledge that he’ll have to go to work today. On Friday he reports in towards mid-afternoon due to the normal uptick in criminal activity on weekend nights; half the time it’s a heart-pounding challenge, but the other half it’s him and Hank doing their best impression of being beat-cops again. Something tells him that tonight is going to be the latter.

Once the coffee is in him, he finally comes alive enough to hear a light clicking sound from the dining room. He shuffles in, not bothering to close his dressing gown.

“Mornin’,” he says gruffly.

“Morning,” replies Juliette, not looking up from her laptop. An empty mug sits next to her, the black ring of grinds at the bottom almost fully evaporated: she must have been up for a while. She has her glasses and her silky, purple gown on, her hair in a high ponytail, and no makeup whatsoever on her face. She obviously hasn’t started her day yet, though she’s already finished a cup of coffee and left it sitting for at least fifteen minutes. It’s unlike her.

Nick comes over with his steaming cup to kiss her forehead, which she offers up unthinkingly. He doesn’t miss her quick tab-switching, either, though she’s pretty deft since she spends more time online than he does. The tab she’s switched to is some site called Etsy.

Nick sets his cup down next to her arm, putting his coffee-warmed hand on her nape and rubbing with a thumb. “It’s okay, you can look at porn with me in the room.”

Juliette looks up at him and rolls her eyes, strangely not smiling at the joke. “I’m not looking at porn.”

Trying to coax a smile out of her, Nick quirks an eyebrow. “It’s alright, honey, I don’t judge. When you get to the the really hot stuff, just let me — ”

Pinching his stomach over her shoulder, Juliette scoffs and then gestures to her empty coffee. “Get me a refill and maybe I’ll share.”

“Alright.” Nicks grabs her cold cup and begins to walk away. “There better be eight tabs up when I get back.”

She makes a face at him, muttering something about “dating a detective.”

Nick sends her a self-satisfied smirk over his shoulder, then goes to do her bidding.

Back in the dining room with her coffee, Nick pulls up a chair over the carpet to sit right next to her, looping an arm around the back of her chair and running his hand through her ponytail with a sense of casual proprietary. “So?” he prods.

Unease flashes on her face before she turns to face him more fully. Nick’s brow furrows and a jolt of worry goes through him, but she’s already talking.

“There is a startling amount of variation among humanity,” she starts, her voice calmly certain. “It’s one of the things that some people point to when they want to attempt to prove human exceptionalism from animals: the sheer number of our heights and widths, skin colors, muscle masses, personalities.” Juliette sends Nick a meaningful look. “Or differences in organs and body features.”

“Uh.” Nicks wrinkles his nose a bit, obviously missing the meaning in Juliette’s meaningful look. “Okay?”

“There are the occasional outliers. The nine-foot tall man. The head as big as a grapefruit.” Juliette taps his nose. “The bulbous nose. But eventually the range of body types among humans _does_ end.”

All this talk of ‘humanity’ starts to make sense to Nick, and a yawning hole opens in his stomach, alarm beginning to fill it even as Nick fills in the blanks for things she’s left unsaid.

Juliette stares at him, putting a hand over his. “Don’t tell me you didn’t notice last night, Nick. I know you did.”

For the first time in a long time, Nick feels truly trapped by Juliette, unable to say anything without digging himself deeper into the hole he’s managed to get into with his secrets and lies. He opens his mouth, hoping something will come out. Nothing does.

“You saw and didn’t say anything. I waited all night for you to bring it up, and you didn’t. Which means you knew, or expected on some level, for him to be — different.”

Nick tries to think fast, of what he can say that will salvage this situation, make Juliette aware that he didn’t know and didn’t expect anything. But he hadn’t exactly been surprised, had he? Still wasn’t surprised at the fact that Monroe isn’t completely human down-there.

Juliette looks down, eyes sad, and begins to pull her hand off Nick’s. In desperation he flips his hand and grips hers, palm to palm, and tugs her back to face him. “Juliette,” he says, floundering. “I didn’t know.”

“But you weren’t surprised! You weren’t. I could tell.” Then she wrenches her hand from his, bringing it to her keyboard. “This is [what I was looking at](http://arbl.cvmbs.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/reprod/semeneval/dog.html), since you wanted to know so badly.”

The next second knocks the breath from Nick as surely as a punch to the gut would, shocking and slightly painful.

“Like I said.” Juliette motions to the screen. “Humans might not have the range needed to explain what we saw last night. But that doesn’t mean such an animal doesn’t exist.”

Nick leans in towards the screen, for one moment forgetting Juliette’s hurt and anger at him in favor of the fascination pricking at his skin: this is something like what he’d seen on Monroe, that dark, almost-purple swelling at the base of his cock where it disappeared into his boxers. It’s followed a second later by awe at Juliette for somehow fitting this puzzle together when even Nick, who had more of the pieces, had been left slightly confused.

Her hand comes up and _snicks_ the laptop closed. “So,” starts Juliette, voice quiet and thready, the complete opposite of her normal confidence; Nick immediately feels even more like shit. “You’ve been a little distant for a few months. I thought maybe it was your first shooting at work, the more violent crimes you’ve been dealing with lately. I tried to understand you staying out later with the guys and working through nights. I know you just want to help people. But this, Nick —” Juliette puts a self-conscious hand to her pony-tail, eyes fixed on the smooth grain of the dining table below. “Anything you want to tell me? Had you seen that — seen Monroe’s. Before?”

Nick’s mouth hangs open a little still, cold air entering and drying his tongue out. Had he seen Monroe naked before? Is that what she’s asking?

“Juliette,” Nick croaks, hand falling to her lap to squeeze hers. She doesn’t squeeze back. “That was the first time I’d ever seen Monroe like that. First time I’d done anything with him. I would never keep that from you.” Nick can hear the truth in his voice, and he hopes she will too.

Slowly she nods, her hair brushing her back with the movement. “But you would keep something from me. What are you not telling me? That thing that we saw... no human should have that. No human _does_ have that.”

Nick takes a deep breath.

“And another thing,” interrupts Juliette, now on a roll, her brow furrowed and her eyes finally coming back to Nick’s. The lines on her face are starting to read anger and not sadness, which strangely relieves Nick. “That woman, when she was terrified of me. You said she ‘must have thought I was someone I wasn’t.’ What was that about? Why did you say that? And when that guy broke in. I thought it was random, or because you were a cop, but now that doesn’t seem right either. And — ”

“Woah, woah,” Nick tries to smile. “One thing at a time.” Quickly, he runs through a dozen different things that he can say. He has always known that if he wants to keep Juliette in the long-run he will have to tell her about himself, at least the basics. And he had planned to tell her, he really had; but the days have gone by so fast, the right time never arriving, leaving Nick unable to work out the best way to explain it all. Who could have guessed Monroe unbuckling his belt would provide the impetus for Nick having to bare his secrets, as well? Soon she’ll know everything: that he is a freak, that he is dangerous to be with, that he isn’t who she has thought he was for so long.

The clock on the wall chimes, and Juliette’s head snaps around to look at its face, though they both know what it will say.

“Crap, I’m going to be late for work,” she mutters, pushing back from the table and Nick to stand. “When will you be home tonight?”

Nick stares at her, his heart unsteady in his chest, beating so hard he thinks his whole body is throbbing. “I’ll be off by nine,” he says, then clears his throat. “And if the Captain tries to keep me, I’ll tell him to budge off, because my girlfriend might leave me if I’m not home to stop her.” 

Shaking her head, Juliette puts a hand on Nick’s cheek. “Don’t be an idiot. No one is leaving anyone.” She then bows down to kiss his forehead, the same as he’d kissed hers. “But after tonight...No more secrets.”

“What if they’re not all mine to keep?”

“Well.” Juliette quirks an eyebrow up. “I highly doubt Monroe is going to be able to hide anything if he ever gets around to taking off his pants in front of both of us.”

The apprehension and distress that was building in Nick’s chest don’t pop, but it’s as if Juliette has opened a pinprick of a hole in them, letting some pressure off of Nick’s chest with the curve of her smile. Nick takes a steadying breath. They can handle this.

Burrowing his face in her stomach, he hugs her close. She smells so nice, citrus and fresh laundry, and he can’t help mumbling a grateful “love you.”

She runs her hands through his thick hair, humming down at him in agreement. “I love y -- “she stops, and fists her hands in his hair just enough to make her presence known. “Nick,” she says slowly, like she’s got a knife in her hand and isn’t sure whether to go after him or not. “Are those my slippers on your feet?”

Nick freezes, face mashed into her soft stomach, arms around her middle. He tries to pull his feet back from where they’re sprawled out so that he can hide the orange fuzzy slippers under the bulk of their bodies, but it’s too late. She’s caught him.

“I cannot believe that you’re wearing my slippers! I have been looking for those forever.” Juliette tugs his ear to peel him off of her stomach, then steps back once. 

It’s her first mistake: Nick makes a break for it, jostling her out of the way to try to escape her wrath.

“They’re mine now,” he says in a parting jibe, crowing more than he really should over stealing house slippers that are two sizes too small for him.

“Nick!” she yells after him, starting to chase him around the house, her robe fluttering open. “I have to be at work soon!”

Laughing, Nick lets her tackle him to the couch, the wool blanket from yesterday under them, still smelling like musk and come. He bites at Juliette’s neck from below, letting his hands roam under her slip, from thigh to hip to stomach. Juliette grabs his wrists and wrenches them up, twinning her hands with his above his head and pinning him down.

“Juliette,” Nick says, for no other reason than the fact that he can. A little sleep crustie that she must have missed this morning sticks to the corner of her right eye, and Nick slips a hand out of her hold to cradle her face and wipe it gently away. 

She smiles but her eyes stay guarded, and Nick resolves again to tell her the complete truth tonight.

~*~

“Oh, hell no,” says Wu when he sees Nick’s face at noon. “I am not walking beat with you tonight.”

“Don’t be like that,” replies Nick, putting his hands on his hips. “I look great.”

Wu gives him a visible once over, managing to make every second as disdainful as possible — one of his many gifts. “If by great you mean ‘like you’ve been run over by a semi-truck’, then yes, Nick, you look great.”

Dropping the routine and his hands, Nick goes to his desk and slips his coat onto his chair. He sighs. “That bad?”

“The bags under your eyes look like formerly undiscovered moon craters.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem.” Wu walks over and smacks a list of sundry overnight, petty crime onto Nick’s desk with totally undeserved sense of self-satisfaction. “So. Trouble with Julez?”

“God, why do you call her that?” Nick picks up the papers and starts leafing through them, sighing at the number of cars reported missing. He shrugs, fighting a smile. “We stayed up late.”

Wu winces in sympathy. “Ouch, late-night fights are always — ” he stops dead. “Oh, Burkhardt.” Nick feels his smile spreading, though he keeps pretending to read. “Burkhardt you almost had me. Well look at you. Good to know you both still have it. Love. Life. Joie de vivre.”

Nick pretends to pop his collar. “What can I say?”

“What can you say?” asks a deep voice from behind Nick. Nick startles and turns to see Captain Renard in his suit, jacket still buttoned. He must be on his way to morning court.

Wu nods over to Nick. “Burkhardt was just saying how much he misses duty at the car lot on Fridays, Captain.”

Renard lifts a single eyebrow. “You got it, Burkhardt. Hank can take beat with Wu today. Now get on it.”

As soon as Renard is out of the room, Nick rolls up the list of offenses from last night and smacks Wu in the chest with it. “I hate the lot and you know it.”

“Yeah.” Wu reaches out to grab the papers from Nick. “But now you’ll be home by eight.”

“Ass,” says Nick fondly.

“Hotter than yours.”

Nick can only nod to that. Even he has to occasionally acknowledge the truth.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick visits Monroe, then sits down to confess to Juliette.

The tarnished silver knocker on Monroe’s door is always heavier than Nick expects it to be.

The door opens a sliver, enough that Nick can only see Monroe’s head and the glow of light from behind him.

“It’s me,” announces Nick unnecessarily, raising his hand in an awkward half-wave.

Monroes sticks his nose out and sniffs, still keeping the door mostly shut.

“You,” says Nick, watching as Monroe breathes deeper and deeper, “going to let me in?”

“All right, all right,” replies Monroe at last, obviously satisfied with whatever he’d smelled. “Get in here.”

“What was that?” asks Nick once he’s inside the house, his coat thrown over the back of a living room chair and a beer chilling his hand.

Monroe looks up from where he’s arranging a slew of ticking hand-watches on a desk. “When you called to actually tell me you’d be coming over instead of just barging in, as is usually your wont, I thought you might be cursed. Or enchanted.”

Nick rolls his eyes and takes a sip of beer. “Hardy-har.”

Monroe pushes the delicate glasses he’s wearing down his nose so he can look fully at Nick. “Not a joke, actually.”

“I — ” Nick takes another, much longer sip of beer. “Seriously?”

“Seriously, man.”

Running his hand through his hair, Nick pulls up the chair at Monroe’s desk and sits down, sighing deeply. So enchantments and curses are real, too. “How can I tell Juliette any of this when _I_ barely understand it?”

Monroe takes his glasses off and sets them in their holder, crossing his arms to look down at Nick. “So that’s what this is about.”

“Well, I mean.” Nick feels vaguely guilty; he’d meant to talk to Monroe about Thursday first. “Not just that. Juliette and me wanted to make sure you were okay. You know, with what happened.”

“Nick.” Monroe sighs and shakes his head. “I should be asking you that.”

“I.” Nick swallows, letting himself remember what happened last night for the first time — it feels like it’s been so much longer than a day since it happened, Monroe looming over and marking him, turning slightly feral right before Nick’s eyes. Just the thought starts a slow coil of arousal in Nick’s stomach, and his head starts to tingle with the remembered sensation of Monroe’s hands twined in it. “I was fine. I am fine.”

Monroe’s nostrils flare, his gaze unblinking on Nick. “I’m not sure you coming over here without Juliette is such a good idea, if you’re going to —.”

“If I’m going to what?” asks Nick, feeling even smaller than usual in the previously comfortable chair. He wants to stand. He doesn’t.

“Smell like that.” 

“Like what?” asks Nick, though he already knows it must be his arousal. He brings up a vivid childhood memory of accidentally walking into his grandpa’s shower when it had been in use — all that saggy skin has never failed to cool him off.

“It’s hard to put a scent into words.” The hardwood floors creak when Monroe takes on more step forward. “But yours...you’re a Grimm, so you always smell different. Dangerous.”

This is news to Nick, but it does explain some things: how he could push Monroe up against a wall and live, for starters. 

“Yet you haven’t hurt me, or fought me,” he prompts, trying to work this all out with his inferior human senses. 

“I don’t hurt people anymore, Nick.” It sounds like Monroe’s reminding himself more than Nick, which is not exactly reassuring. Nick’s thighs begin to flex with the urge to jump up from the chair, his mind already tracing several ways out of Monroe’s house: the front door, two large windows, the back door...

“And what does Juliette smell like?” asks Nick, who knows he has to keep talking to give Monroe something to concentrate on.

Monroe closes his eyes and breathes deep, as if remembering something — or picking her scent from Nick. 

“Human,” he says at last, opening his eyes, which have lost some of their glaze. “Calming.” The lines of Monroe’s face relax one by one, till he lets out an enormous sigh and goes to sit at the chair across the table from Nick. “Blutbaden aren’t animals, you know. We might like to tumble around the forest and share kills and scent mark, but we can have sex without those things. Some of us settle down with other creatures, even the rare human. But for us to master our — ‘inner self’, I suppose, for lack of a better term — we have to be comfortable, collected. There can’t be any threats around, because the first thing us Blutbaden do when we scent danger is call on that part of us that can put up the best defense.”

“So,” says Nick, swallowing. “I’m a threat?”

“Something like that.”

“But I’ve always smelled like this, right?”

“Jeez, you don’t quit, do you?” asks Monroe in exasperation, running a hand through his hair, which comically frizzes out. “The smell of a threat I can handle. But arousal makes everything sharper, more immediate. Last night it left me with two options.”

Nick shouldn’t ask. There’s a lot he shouldn’t do. “What two options?”

Monroe looks up, eyes flashing. “Kill you. Or...hold you down.”

Just like that, all thoughts of his grandpa’s saggy skin are pushed out of Nick’s mind by the sense memory of their movie night: on his knees, waiting for Monroe to finally coat his face, wanting to feel Monroe’s skin under his hands.

“I — ” starts Nick, voice hoarse. “I can’t say I’m much for the first, but I didn’t mind the second. At all.”

Letting out an angry, bitter huff of laughter, Monroe scowls. “That wasn’t holding you down, Nick. Why do you think I left in such a hurry? If I’d really let go, you might not be walking today. Your neck might be raw.”

Nick must be fucked in the head, because that just makes him squirm in his seat more. “Who says that’s so bad?” He twirls his empty beer bottle in his hand, the label spinning too quickly to read.

Across the table Monroe picks up a delicate gold wristwatch that he begins to fiddle with, big hands becoming unimaginable gentle and precise. Nick doesn’t think he’s going to answer, until Monroe pops open the watch face and, without making eye contact, asks,

“When’s the last time you made Juliette bleed, really bleed?”

For a second, confusion makes Nick incapable of speech. Then, “What?” His voice is everything he wishes his words were: pissed off, hurt, uncomprehending. 

“The last time you hurt her, Nick.” Monroe sounds casual, like he’s asking Nick the last time he went running in the park. “Not just gave her a hickey, or tied her wrists together, or gave her a spanking. The last time you _hurt_ her.”

“I would never hurt Juliette,” replies Nick, not even able to think about blood or bruises on Juliette’s skin, or what he would do if anyone put them there.

“Well why,” starts Monroe, letting the gold watch clatter to the table in a way incongruous to his previous handling, “would you think I would want to hurt you? That I would be happy to have you bleed because of me?” 

Nick swallows, seeing what Monroe has been getting at. “I just thought.” Cutting himself off, Nick swallows again.

“Thought that because I’m not completely human, what, I wouldn’t have a sense of decency?” 

“I didn’t think that,” he says, softly decisive as he sets his beer bottle of the table with a _clunk_. For the first time he starts to see how selfish he and Juliette might be, asking Monroe for this, asking Monroe to toe his line so closely. Yet on Thursday, no one bled. “Juliette and me, we enjoyed last night. I can take you getting rough, and she likes to watch.” 

Monroe says nothing, and Nick grows wary of even asking the question he came to get an answer to.

“Did you not enjoy it?”

Immediately, Monroe laughs in obvious disbelief. “Enjoy it? Sure. Would’ve enjoyed it a lot less if there’d been any arterial spray. It doesn’t really spruce up a decorating job as much as you might think.”

“But nothing like that happened,” presses Nick, sensing an opening and unwilling to let Monroe go off on a tangent. “And frankly, I’m insulted you think I’d be so easily overwhelmed.”

“We wouldn’t be having this problem if I thought that.” Monroe gives Nick a heavy look. Then he glances away when the clocks around the house start chiming, marking the hour. “As long as Juliette doesn’t know about you and your Grimmy-self, this is all theoretical, anyway.”

Nick licks his dry lips. 

“I’m telling her tonight. She noticed your — ” Nick hand-waves vaguely in the direction of Monroe’s pelvis. That internet site from the morning had labelled it a knot, but Nick has no idea what a Blutbad calls it, and doesn’t want to chance using insulting doggy vocabulary. 

“Well, shit.” Monroe sighs. 

“Yeah, basically.” Putting an elbow on the table, Nick tries to get into a different frame of mind. He still has about fifteen minutes before he should head home; might as well research. “So. What was that?”

“You don’t have to make it sound like that,” replies Monroe, defensive. “It’s just a thing some Blutbad males have.”

“That was a wonderfully descriptive answer, thank you so much for that.”

“Gimme a break, it’s not like people are usually cross-examining me about my knot.”

Nick feels a second of vindication before he really looks at Monroe, who’s fidgeting under the table and crossing and uncrossing his arms in front of himself, unhappy little frown twisting his face. 

“Yeah. Maybe we can talk later? With Juliette? Assuming she doesn’t break up with me tonight, that is.”

“She won’t. Don’t get me wrong, she probably should.” Monroe finds a small smile, wane and tired looking. “But I think you’re stuck with each other.”

Nick gives Monroe a grateful sigh in response, knowing Monroe’s trying to put him at ease.

They spend a few minutes more puttering around the house, back to normalcy or what passes for it usually, before they decide to meet and talk on Wednesday if Juliette agrees. On the doorstep of Monroe’s house, Nick wants to grab Monroe, kiss him — anything to cement their tentative steps forward — but he holds back, his wants buzzing under his skin.

Before closing the door Monroe pauses, sniffs once and twitches, his face shivering then twisting into the lines of a Blutbad. He must be nervous or harried for his true-face to have slipped up.

“I’m not a Blutbad a la carte,” he says in delayed warning. “It’s kind of an all-or-nothing thing."

"Well," replies Nick, swaying forward a little, putting a hand at Monroe's elbow. "Good thing Juliette and I are all-or-nothing kind of people." 

A second later his back slams against one of the brick walls on the outside of Monroe's house and his lungs go afire with the sudden impulses of fear and arousal coursing through him, Monroe leaning down to pin him solidly. 

"Monroe," says Nick in shocked disbelief, and Monroe releases Nick's hand from where it'd unconsciously flown halfway to the concealed gun at his side. Monroe instead slides his hand beneath Nick's jacket, hot and spanning a part of Nick's spine, the other gripping Nick's neck and head, Monroe holding his thumb stiff at Nick's carotid. With every ten of Nick's stumbling heartbeats Monroe takes a stutter-quick breath, eyes darkening by the second, and then he's leaning in to nip Nick's ear and pressing his body closer. 

Nick’s knows he shouldn’t test, shouldn’t toe whatever line Monroe is so carefully trying to walk, but Nick has never been one to sit idly in the starting blocks. He fights Monroe’s hold and finds his lips, kissing him: Nick’s trying to be good, give Monroe the assurance he needs to know Nick won’t be trying anything, to know that Nick isn’t a threat — but the kiss just gets rougher, Nick’s head knocking against the unsanded stone once, twice. 

As if trying to meld their bodies, Monroe slides closer, pushing Nick up till Nick feels some of his weight leave the ground. It’s automatic that his heart, already in double-time, somehow triples, and he’s reminded just how strong and fast Monroe is: how quickly he’d stopped Nick reaching for his gun, how easily he’s got Nick almost dangling now.

Biting at Nick’s lips one last time, Monroe pulls back, the action seeming to almost pain him, if his snarl is any indication. Nick resettles onto the ground, panting, and brings a hand to his neck and ear, where the tingling of beard-burn is just starting. 

There’s a strange truce, neither of them moving in any way, the night air charged between them. Nick has felt this energy before, on his knees with Juliette guiding him, but here and now with only Monroe and the darkness, the tension becomes almost suffocating. He can feel that the back of his head is raw from being rubbed against stone, his shoulder pained from Monroe’s handling. The harsh chirp of crickets is suddenly unbearable. 

Keeping several feet away, Monroe licks a strip over his own thumb, eyes hidden in the shadows. He brings it, still wet with spit, to Nick’s cheek. He licks three his thumb three more times, each time dragging it over Nick’s skin in different places: the other cheek, the two sides of his neck. Nick keeps quiet, watching Monroe mark him with his spit, trying not to think.

Finished at last, Monroe steps away, all his awkwardness rushing back into his stance as he looms in his own doorway. He clears his throat.

“Um. Are you okay?” he asks when Nick doesn’t immediately move. 

“Yeah.” Nodding belatedly, Nick levers off the wall, lips still burning with want and knees weak. “Yeah. Next Wednesday, right?”

“Man. I guess,” says Monroe. He then watches, obviously waiting for Nick to move on. Nick is halfway down the sidewalk to his car when he hears Monroe stiffly call out, “Good luck tonight!”

Nick throws a smile over his shoulder and leaves with a wave, like he has every time. 

He drives out of sight and pulls over in a residential neighborhood, rubbing a hand over his jeans and stifling a groan as he comes.

~*~

Across the table, Juliette holds her face in her hands, her bottom lip trembling slightly.

Maybe Nick had been optimistic about her accepting him for everything and anything he might be. 

Unable to eat or drink anything in front of him, his guts twisted up and fighting, Nick tries not to reach for Juliette’s hand. He doesn’t even want to know if she’ll let him touch her, right now, and if he doesn’t try he won’t know; he’ll have a few more minutes where he still has her, or thinks that she at least doesn’t hate him —

“Nick.” Juliette’s voice crashes his pity-party spectacularly. It’s small and tight, and all at once Nick’s hands are sweating like it’s their first date again.

“Yes?” asks Nick. 

“I can feel you freaking out,” says Juliette, still hiding her eyes. Nick shifts in his seat.

“You don’t think I’m crazy, do you?” There’s a moment of silence.

“No.” Juliette exhales, like it cost her something to say that. “Or at least if you are, then I am too. I know what I saw on Thursday.” Then, as if in a note to herself, “Shared hallucinations are improbable.”

Even with his stomach in knots, Nick can appreciate her dedication to science. 

“So — ” says Nick, but Juliette holds up a hand.

“It’s just,” she starts. “A lot to process. And it’s my turn to freak-out. So shh.”

Nick had thought he might spend his night holding a crying Juliette, or catching flying projectiles like clocks or shoes, or having energetic make-up sex (though that possibility had admittedly been his most optimistic); instead he finds himself across the table from the woman he loves, watching her deconstruct her whole world view for him. Every ten minutes or so she’ll ask a quiet question about the new world he inhabits, or his powers, or what being a Grimm means. He can’t answer half of them, and when he tells her that Aunt Marie kept a small trove of books in her hidey-hole and admits that he hasn’t read any of them, she looks at him like he’s simple.

“So you haven’t even read them all yet?”

“Hey,” Nick says, defensive; it’s just that they’re so repetitive, and go on and on about entrails and the body’s humours in mangled psuedo-German. “I do read some of them. They just get boring. Like the old poems you used to read me.”

For the first time the whole night, Juliette looks up at him, and her eyes are shining with tears. Nick’s stomach drops to his feet, but then he notices: she’s smiling. 

“You’re a brute, Nick,” she says, sniffling and wiping the back of her hand over her eyes. “ _Paradise Lost_ is a classic.” 

Before he can think, Nick is on his feet and at her side, hovering. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, an automatic response to her tears. 

“For your taste in literature?” she asks, then seems to laugh and cry at the same time, her tears finally streaking down her face too fast for her to stop. “Because it’s a bit too late to apologize for that. You’ve already infected our shelves with Dan Brown.”

“What can I do?” asks Nick, nervous at what looks like a mini-breakdown.

“Kleenex,” she demands, hand held imperiously out towards the box on the counter. Nick fetches it, and she blows hard into it. When she’s finished she places it on the table and gestures for another. He’s passing her the fourth tissue when she stops mid-blow, and looks up at him, eyes wary. Nick braces himself.

“Monroe’s got that thing,” she says. Then, in explanation, “The knot. So, what about the ‘grimm’?”

Nick looks down at his jeans, quirking an eye up in confusion. 

“Just.” Juliette finishes blowing her nose. “Any freaky sex things I should know about that you’ve been hiding?” 

With great gravitas, Nick crosses his arms and furrows his brow in thought. 

“Actually, now that you mention it.” 

Juliette looks up in delayed alarm, her nose bright red and eyes wet from crying. Nick continues, and hopes he isn’t making a mistake.

“Grimm are actually known for their unearthly ability to satisfy women.” 

The moment hangs, Nick’s breath caught in his chest like the kleenex clutched in Juliette’s hand, its future — his future — dependent completely on her. The secrets he’s kept from her have opened a gulf that they’ve never traversed before, together or alone, and he only hopes that his lame jokes don’t push her farther away.

She throws the tissue at him, hicupping up a laugh, and Nick takes it for the beginning of forgiveness that it is. He plucks the tissue from the air, and breathes deep.

~*~

Later, in bed, the three-quarter moon streams in through their blinds and illuminates their faces, soft and undemanding. 

“You hid things from me,” whispers Juliette.

“I’m sorry,” says Nick, again. Instead of being tired of saying it, he’s grateful she lets him. “I wanted to protect you. You can always trust me.”

Juliette looks at him, her sigh coming through in her eyes. “I don’t think I’m the one that has to learn that.”

“I do trust you.” Nick closes his eyes and breathes out, pulling her close and putting his nose into her hair. She smells wonderful, like her fresh-cut melon shampoo, and his whole body quakes when he thinks about losing her. “I just don’t want you in more danger because of me.”

“It’s better I know what’s out there.”

Nick sighs. “Yeah. You’re right.”

“I know,” replies Juliette with a curve of smile.

Outside, clouds swallow the moon, leaving the night black and its creatures blind.


	3. Chapter 3

The next few days pass quickly, normalcy regained. On Tuesday mornings Nick sleeps in, his shift not starting ‘til midday. Juliette almost always snuggles up during that time, too — she rarely wakes up for makeup or coffee on Tuesday. But this Tuesday Nick finds himself being jostled awake at the ungodly hour of six, Juliette in form-fitting lycra and her red hair cascading down her spine in a high ponytail.

“‘ere y’going?” Nick manages to ask, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. She’s even got work-out shoes on, Christ. 

“Pilates,” she says, leaning over to kiss his cheek. “Monroe invited me. Sorry for waking you. I was going to leave a note, since I forgot to mention it last night.” 

Blinking, Nick rolls onto his back and looks up at Juliette. “Y’gonna conspire ‘gainst me?” he asks, still trying to figure out how he mouth works.

Juliette laughs. “If we do decide to, you might as well give up now.”

“Fair enough,” mumbles Nick, turning back to his pillow. He goes out like a light.

~*~

  


It’s only later in the day, cognizance finally achieved, that Nick starts to worry about what Juliette and Monroe might get up to unsupervised. He’s not worried about them _doing_ anything without him, but he’s maybe a little apprehensive about their potential plotting, and it shows as he gnaws on the idea ceaselessly.

“Yo, Nick.” Hank hits Nick’s chest with the back of his hand, friendly but a little sharp. “Back to the living, man. This double-homicide isn’t gonna solve itself.”

“Though really, I would appreciate it if it did. Just once, that’s all I’m asking.” Wu snaps off his glove and tosses it into the trashbag he’s carrying. 

“Sorry,” says Nick belatedly, shaking himself. “And yeah. Sometimes wish we could just talk to them.” 

Hank and Wu look over from the two very dead bodies to Nick, incredulous.

“Man, don’t you watch any movies?” Hank shakes his head.

“You’re basically asking for a zombie invasion saying stuff like that,” Wu adds. “And I need to find out what happens on America’s Next Top Model this week, so you’d better not fuck that up for me.” 

Nick raises his hands above his head. “Sorry, sorry, Jesus.” 

“You gotta knock on wood.” Hank jerks a finger over his shoulder.

Nick looks around. The apartment they’re in is made solely of sleek steel and glass. “But there’s no wood here.”

Wu nods towards the door. “Stop bothering us with your complaints. You can’t concentrate, so at least go outside and find some wood so we can avert the zombie apocalypse. Then you can come back and solve this homicide for us.” 

Hank backs Wu up, and soon enough Nick is forced outside to ‘avert the zombie apocalypse.’

Outside the apartment, Nick shakes his head. His team always knows when he needs a moment; maybe he should worry about that. Those thoughts are swept away, though, when he see that his phone has no texts from either Juliette or Monroe. He can’t help biting his cheek. He’ll just have to call. 

“Babe?” 

“Hey, —babe.” Juliette grunts once and breathes in quickly, panting a few times. 

“Are you still with Monroe?” asks Nick, almost scared to hear the answer.

“Yeah. Exercise tapes.” 

“Oh.” Nick exhales. “Thought you had work?”

“Called in,” replies Juliette cheerfully.

From the background Nick hears Monroe offer a strained _hey, Nick_ , and Nick smiles. 

“Well, don’t workout too hard.”

“No worries. After this we’re cooking.”

“Wish I could be there.”

“You?” Juliette gasps out, laughing once. “You’d run straight back to work, lazy bones.”

“For the eating,” clarifies Nick, smiling.

“You will be, don’t worry.” Juliette adds, “Hey. Gotta go for this next tape. But I love you. And we’ll see you in a few hours.” 

By the time he answers, she’s already hung up.

~*~

  
“More?” Nick asks, hand on the neck of the bottle in the middle of the table. The white wine bottle is room-temperature, only reminding him exactly how long they’ve all been sitting around twirling pasta on their forks. Out of his depth, Nick reverts back to college manners and the old standby of trying to get everyone shit-faced.

Across the table Monroe demurs, wiping his mouth assiduously with the cloth napkins that Nick had found an hour before dinner. In the kitchen, three empty bottles prove that the three of them have worked steadily through dinner, and if Nick is honest he really shouldn’t even offer. No matter how many jokes and soft asides are made, though, the frission of tension that runs through the night pricks at Nick, reminding him of what the three of them might be doing soon.

“So.” Monroe sips the dregs of his wine down hastily. “So.”

Juliette looks over at Monroe, small smile on her face. “Let’s get these plates to the kitchen, then talk out in the living room.”

Like Juliette’s a fireman who’s just crashed into his flaming room to save him, Monroe gratefully nods.

They clean up in silence, knocking off each other in the kitchen like bumper cars. Nick doesn’t miss Monroe standing slightly too close for a second, or his huge inhale. It sends a tingle up Nick’s spine, the tension doubling. 

In the living room Juliette sits Nick in the middle of their largest couch, the one they usually watch movies on. 

“You want to show her?” he asks, looking at Monroe.

Monroe, with no warning, shifts, his hair thickening and his bones rearranging. Instead of the shirek from Juliette that he expects, there’s only a slight tensing and a light laugh.

“We had show-and-tell earlier today, dear,” she explains.

“Oh,” says Nick, disappointment evident. “I wanted to see that.”

“She didn’t pass out or anything.” Monroe has slipped his human face back on. He aims a tiny grin at Juliette, but Nick notices that he’s playing nervously with a loose thread on his shirt.

“Of course she didn’t.” Nick throws an arm around her shoulder, bringing her closer to his body. “She’s a badass.”

Juliette snuggles into his arm, sending a brief glance up at Monroe through her lashes. “I admit some prior preparation.”

It takes Nick a second to catch on to the fact that Juliette is talking about seeing Monroe’s knot last Thursday. Monroe glances down at his lap, then presses closer. His jeans catch against Nick’s, and suddenly Nick realizes that they’re on the same couch they were on a little less than a week ago, when Monroe had kissed him, forcing Nick’s face up to take a marking. The air between them goes metallic and strong, Monroe’s brown eyes flashing with a golden shine, his eyes flicking between Nick’s neck and Nick’s lips.

“You all right, Monroe?” comes a voice, breaking the tense stand-off. It’s Juliette, her voice smoothing the air between them all.

It takes a second, but Monroe clears his throat, eyes coming back up to their faces. “Yes.” 

Juliette nods, then turns to Nick. “We talked earlier today, about what we could do tomorrow. I told Monroe some of what we said, but he wants to hear it from you.”

“Uh, yeah. And if you aren’t interested anymore...” Monroe shrugs, his shoulders rolling like hills.

With Juliette at his side, calming and caring, Nick knows his answer. “I am.”

“Then you can’t fight me,” Monroe says suddenly. “Tomorrow, you can’t fight me, or else I won’t be able to control myself.”

“He’ll be good,” promises Juliette, one of her hands stroking over Nick’s arm.

“Juliette is going to help us.” Monroe wipes his hands on his jeans as he says it, nervous.

“So are we — ” Nick flicks his eyes between them. “ — going to go all the way?” He sounds like a high schooler, but he doesn’t even care. 

“It’s up to you,” replies Juliette.

Nick gives the appearance of thinking about it, but really there is no question. Just the thought of Monroe holding him down and fucking him open makes him shiver, an unsteadiness that starts in his bones and vibrates out to his flesh, out-of-control and wonderful.

“Let’s do it,” he says. 

“There’s just one thing.” Monroe ruffles his own hair with a hand. “We can’t have anything between us.”

“What, like clothes?” asks Nick, before he’s fully thought through what Monroe’s saying.

“No, man. Just if there’s anything between me and you, down there, you know, like a condom. It might get ugly. You don’t smell like a normal human, and it makes me. Harsh. Harsher if I know you won’t be taking my scent.”

A little lost, Nick looks to Juliette, who’s nodding as if this all makes sense. 

“He’s a Blutbad, too, so he doesn’t carry any diseases that can be passed through sex.”

“That’s fine with me, but.” Nick arches an eyebrow at Juliette. “You’re okay with this?” It took them a long, long time to get to the point in their relationship where they threw away rubbers.

“I get to watch it happen,” she says, almost purring. “You can bet I want to see you all filled up.”

“Yeah.” Nick’s mouth goes dry. “Yeah.”

“Juliette.” Monroe’s voice sounds almost pained, a dark thrumming inside of his lungs.

“We just need to do one more thing tonight.” With a single hand, Juliette presses at Nick, angling his neck so that Monroe can see its pale stretch. Soft lights from around the room bounce off everything, creating glowing pockets of light, one of which envelops the couch and highlight Nick’s tendons. “Something to make tomorrow go more smoothly.”

“Okay?” Monroe is almost growling, his body tensing next to Nick’s. 

“It’s okay,” she reassures. “Do it.”

Monroe closes the gap between them at a languorous pace, as if he knows this prey doesn’t want to run away. Once his nose hits the column of Nick’s neck, Nick grits his teeth, his whole body shuddering. Small bites pepper the muscle there, Monroe laving, licking, sucking at the skin. 

A hand lands on his knee, the knee closest to Monroe, and Nick pants aloud in shock. He tries to look down and confirm who it is, but Juliette tugs at his hair, keeping him vulnerable to Monroe’s mouth. 

“Hold him, hold him,” mutters Monroe, pulling back from Nick for only a moment. Juliette’s hold tightens, pain pricking at Nick’s scalp, but it simply heightens everything. The skin at Nick’s neck is beginning to go raw, the feel of blood rushing to its surface heady. 

“Are you — ,” starts Nick, pausing for a breath, dizzy. “— marking me?” 

A small snarl is his only answer, the hand on his knee creeping further up his jeans. It must be Monroe, because it’s a huge hand tipped with long, strong fingers, fingers that are curling in at Nick’s thighs and leaving what will become bruises there. 

“He has to,” says Juliette, answering Nick’s question. “For this Thursday.” 

At last Monroe pulls off Nick’s neck. At the same time Juliette lets Nick’s head go, giving him the power to move his own body again. 

“Looks good.” Eyes trained on Nick’s neck, Monroe licks his own lips once. A red blush takes over his face. “Yeah. Good.”

When Nick raises a hand to the huge bruise at his neck, Monroe’s hand tightens around his thigh. A few more inches and his hand’ll be on top of Nick’s cock, God, finally. Nick bucks his hips.

The reaction is immediate. Monroe bares his teeth, canines sliding out, and puts a controlling arm at Nick’s neck. Through his teeth, he speaks. “Can I?”

Nick blinks, overwhelmed, but realizes that Monroe is again talking to Juliette, not him. 

The couch creaks when Juliette shifts closer for a better look down at where Monroe’s hand is so close to Nick’s clothed erection. 

“Make him come in his jeans,” she says, a little breathless. 

“Fuck,” is the only word Nick has time for before Monroe is rubbing him, putting the slightest pressure on Nick’s cock as he takes Nick’s lips in a burning kiss. It’s aggressive but slow, a full possession that’s echoed with Monroe’s sure handling of Nick, deliberate everywhere. 

A soft hand traces the shell of Nick’s ear on Juliette’s side, and her voice comes in a hushed rush against his face as Monroe returns to tenderize Nick’s throat more. 

“You two look so hot, babe. He’s going to make you feel so good tomorrow, when we open you up with our fingers and he slides into you, knots you.” 

A stuttered moan makes it out of Nick before he clamps his lips shut. Monroe can probably still hear the high whine in Nick’s throat, though. How is Juliette so comfortable with this stuff? Their pilates session must have included a lot more talk than Nick originally thought.

“You want that?” asks Monroe, voice almost disbelieving. “You really want me to claim you? Bite and scratch and take you?” 

There’s no time for a response before Nick is coming all over himself in his jeans, Monroe’s hand a constant pressure and the orgasm a complete shock. Under him the couch shakes with his body, his back slamming into it. 

Next to him Juliette laughs, high and gleeful. “Looks like he does.”

The next few minutes pass in a daze, Monroe adjusting himself and rising, Juliette following him to the door. From his position on the couch Nick can’t hear what they’re discussing, but they’re both smiling tentatively at the other, and Juliette hugs Monroe before letting him out. When she turns, one of the lamps at the side of the room illuminates her face, and Nick is struck by how lucky he is.

“‘m lucky,” he says to Juliette as she walks back over to the couch, where he’s sprawled out. A dark spot is growing on his jeans, where come is soaking through his boxers. Juliette smiles down at him, her hand going to her own jeans. They slide off her smooth legs, leaving her in just blue lace panties and a t-shirt.

“More like lazy. Move over,” she commands, urging him up. It’s always easy to let her move him, to let her direct his actions, especially like this, when he’s needy for her touch. Sliding into the spot he vacated, she lays back on the couch and curls a hand in his hair. “I want to have fun too.”

Nick grins and slides her panties off, throwing them behind his head, where they land on a lamp. Juliette rolls her eyes in patient exasperation.

In a few minutes Juliette is moaning above him, curling her fingers over his ears and smoothing her hands through his hair. Once Nick hated this, licking up into women. It had been like performing chores before a party, a necessary sublimation of his own wants. Between Juliette’s thighs, though, with her shivers running through him, Nick scoffs at his younger self. 

Juliette’s cunt is pink and wet, its taste mellow. From the few drunken blowjobs that Nick remembers giving out, women taste infinitely better than men and are much less likely to choke him. In thanks for this he noses at her stomach, kissing its shallow curve softly, his lips brushing against the tiny hairs beneath her cute bellybutton.

“Nick,” she says, like his name is a swear word.

“Yes, dear?” he asks, his lips buzzing against her clit with the two muffled words. He cocks an eyebrow up at her.

An encouraging hand at the back of his head speaks more eloquently than Juliette ever could, and Nick bends back down, finally giving himself over in earnest to eating her out. When she comes it’s with a sharp tug at his hair and full-body shudder, her cunt clenching up sweetly. 

One last playful lick and Juliette pushes him back, momentarily overwhelmed. Nick looks down at his handywork, at Juliette’s thighs reddened with beard-burn and her cunt puffy with arousal, and can’t help his self-satisfied smile.

Juliette knocks him lightly on the head, laughing and shaking her head at him as she does. They collapse together, Nick squishing her into the now very dirty couch.

“So.” Nick drags a finger up her arm. “How bad is this hickey?”

A wince comes over Juliette’s face. 

Nick drops his head to her chest. “That bad, huh?”

“Might want to wear a scarf tomorrow.”

“Damn, I’m doing paperwork in the morning, too. How am I supposed to wear a scarf inside for that long?”

Juliette shrugs, obviously trying to contain her laughter. “I don’t know. Sucks to be you.”

“Maybe I’ll just let everyone see it. They’ll all assume it’s you, you know.”

“They will not!” Juliette smacks his bum, the sound muffled by Nick’s jeans. Then, she amends, “Well, Wu might.”

“That’s because he’s a good man. Knows evil when he sees it.” Arching an eyebrow, Nick looks down at Juliette, who just scoffs at the implication.

“Just don’t tell him the truth.”

“Psh.” Tracing Juliette’s belly button with a finger, he asks, “But really, what did you mean?”

“Huh?”

“Earlier, you said that the hickey is for tomorrow.” 

“Oh, well. Monroe said that if tomorrow you’re already marked as ours, he’ll feel less like he needs to make a claim.”

 _Make a claim_. It’s ridiculous that those words echo so loudly inside Nick’s head.

“God. It’s happening tomorrow.” Nick knows he sounds slightly like a kid on Christmas Eve, but Juliette just smiles indulgently. 

“Yes. Yes it is.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See added content notes.
> 
> Sorry for taking a year to finish this. Aha. ha.

It’s like all the work that the precinct has been dodging in the past few weeks drops on everyone at once, calls lighting up 911 until even the senior detectives are put on watch. Fires, bomb threats, three murders, four car chases, and reports of dozens of missing cats and dogs swamp their office. Captain Renard sighs and cocks an eyebrow at Hank and Nick, apologizing with one shake of his head before he sends them out on the streets. Nick ends up chasing down a mugger through alleys like the beat cop he used to be, breath coming fast as he zeros in. Hank is the one who eventually cuffs the guy, but not before the mugger gets a swing in at Nick, catching him on the torso hard. 

“Another bruise to match your neck,” says Hank as he laughs and shoves the mugger into their borrowed cop car.

Nick rolls his eyes, and on the way back to the precinct they keep the wailing lights on like they haven’t in forever.

The day is so hectic that Nick doesn’t have time to think about what’s happening later. Sometime in the rush he loses his scarf and the hickie that Monroe gave him announces itself loudly on his throat, but Hank only gets in a little ribbing before they’re being called away again. Nick should be grateful that they’re busy, that he can’t think too deeply about anything, but even that feeling is pressed down by the constant imperative to _go go go_. 

It isn’t until half past six that they finally get called back in and sent home, both Hank and he a little worse for the wear. They’re not twenty-three anymore. 

Car idling at a red light on the way home, Nick freezes up, hands gripping the steering wheel until it creaks, and he realizes: 

Today’s the day. 

\---

Wet from the shower, Nick steps out of the steaming bathroom and runs a hand through his hair. He’d scrubbed the most thoroughly he knew how in there, and he feels squeaky clean both inside and out. Juliette smiles at him from across their bedroom, her cotton shorts and sleep shirt effortlessly sexy to Nick.

“Here you go,” she says, handing him boxers to change into. 

“Thanks.” He slips them on on, knowing his nerves probably come through in his shaking fingers and unsteady steps. 

“Hey.” Juliette puts a hand on his chest and a hand on his cheek. “I can call Monroe and tell him this is off. He’d understand, babe, you know he would.” 

For a second Nick thinks about accepting. He doesn’t know why he’s nervous about this, when Juliette has had him open and wanting before. Maybe it’s because it’s been so long since anyone but she saw him laid out and gasping, completely vulnerable. That takes trust, a different kind than he and Hank have, something he’s only ever shared with one person in his life. Nick doesn’t know if he’s ready to have Monroe see him like that, the depth of him, the wanting, but as he looks into Juliette’s eyes he knows that as long as she’s there with him, everything will be okay. He can let go with Monroe, because Juliette will be there to catch him if Monroe doesn’t. 

“I’m good.” Nick smiles, a flush of tension leaving him with the expression. “I’m ready.”

Perfectly on time, the doorbell rings. Juliette lingers near him for a moment as if worried he’ll leave, but then places a chaste kiss on his lips.

“I’ll be right back.”

Nick sits on the bed in her absence, glad she’s given him another minute or two to get situated. He tracks movements through the house, Juliette welcoming Monroe, speaking for a moment at the door, leading him down the hall. A sense of unease hits him, fluttering up and quickening his heart, but Monroe is already in their house, at their door, in their room.

Juliette enters first and Monroe trudges in behind her, clearly nervous as he picks at his flannel shirt and shifts where he stands. Bread crumbs cling to the bottom of his undershirt and his beard and hair lay tousled, like he’s been running his hands over his head anxiously.

It’s a reminder Nick needed: this is Monroe, smart and bumbling and strangely sweet Monroe. Nick gets to meet a new side of him today, but that won’t be a bad thing. Looking up and down Monroe’s solid form, his bulk fit underneath flannel, Nick acknowledges that in fact it has the potential to be a very, very good thing. 

“Hey man.” Monroe lifts a hand in an awkward hello, his eyes flicking over Nick’s bare chest.

“Hey,” Nick returns with a grin.

“Hey,” says Juliette from the ensuite bathroom’s doorway, mockingly fond of them both. They all laugh. “Let’s sit down and relax a little.”

Without having to be told, Monroe and Nick bracket her, keeping her carefully between them as the bed sags with their weight.

“I know we’re all on the same page, but let’s go over ground rules anyway. ‘Stop’, ‘wait’, ‘no’ all work to move to a different action. Colors, too. ‘Red’ means stop immediately. If anyone says it, we get dressed and cool down, then eventually talk about what happened. ‘Yellow’ is slow down. ‘Green’ for all-good.”

Next to her Nick nods, the spiel a relatively rare but comfortable routine for them. They don’t actually often have what others would term kinky sex, but Juliette enjoys challenges and learning, and sex had been no different in the first years of their relationship. Together they have created a system that works; all they need to do is find a slot for Monroe. 

The bed shifts with Monroe’s weight. “But you know -- once I’m close to knotting, I can’t just -- ”

Nick meets Nick’s eyes and nods. “We know.”

“In that case...” Monroe shrugs like he’s nonchalant about all this, but his back is straight as a board, so unlike his normal slouch.

“Great.” Juliette smiles warmly and leaves them on the bed, two feet of space between them. “I’m going to get us water. Don’t start yet.”

A slightly awkward silence descends in the wake of her absence, until Nick finally gets the courage up to glance at Monroe. The look Monroe is giving him is slightly awed, brown eyes flicking up and down Nick’s body, landing hungrily on Nick’s neck -- where Monroe’s mark is still a brand. It hasn’t been anything Nick’s thought about, past how to conceal it at work, but now it’s aflame.

Gold shimmers in Monroe’s eyes and Nick licks his lips. “We can’t start yet,” Nick reminds him.

“I know,” Monroe says, the words a low thrum.

“Good.” All the air seems to leave the room when Monroe leans in, stopping only inches away from Nick’s face.

“Back,” Juliette says at the door, two full glasses of water in hand. She smiles. “Well, looks like leaving you two alone was a mistake.”

“Can I – ?” starts Monroe, his hand halfway to Nick. He's asking Juliette. Nick supposes he'd better get used to that.

Indulgently, Juliette nods. “Take his mouth. I'm not using it now.”

The words, how Juliette simply gives him away like a party favor, burrow into Nick's brain. Before Monroe is even on top of him, anchoring a hand in his hair and baring Nick's throat, Nick is hardening in his boxers. Over the years Juliette has placed a thousand little hooks in Nick's mind that she can pull at will, bells she can ring if she needs Nick to come running. He’s never figured out how to hold it against her.

In the background Juliette moves around, ruffling through their bedside drawers, but Nick promptly loses track of her.

The air between Nick and Monroe begins to tighten, just like it did when Nick visited Monroe without Juliette, dangerous for its lack of oxygen. Pushing at Nick's chest, Monroe lays him flat out on the bed, tugging Nick's hair to position Nick any way he chooses. From these brief moments, Nick knows his scalp is going to ache tomorrow. He can't find it in himself to care.

Like an untamed wave Monroe's kisses grow, first lapping, learning again the terrain of Nick's lips, then roughening, choppy and demanding, straying to Nick's chin and neck.

“Ah,” Nick sighs when Monroe forces him to bare his throat.

Monroe looks down, eyes blotted black with pleasure, small snarls rolling over his face as he takes in Nick's submission. Nick can only imagine what he himself looks like, laid out on the bed shirtless, a hickey the size of a fist on his bared throat, unable to move without permission.

As the last thought Nick groans, a bit wicked. The bed rocks when he bucks up and nips at Monroe, twisting in his grip. It feels good to push, to see what Monroe will do when challenged, if he'll give in or if –

Sharp teeth at Nick's throat send a shiver through him and he stills totally, breathing loudly through his nose. Fangs dig into his abraded skin unforgivingly, and Monroe's low growling fills the air. Two yanks on his hair and Nick is keening.

There’s a dip in the bed: Juliette joining them. “I’ve got this,” she says as she slides her hands into Nick’s hair, replacing Monroe’s grip with her own.

With his hands free to travel Nick’s body at will, Monroe slips them to Nick’s hips, rubbing at the thin skin there. He drops biting kisses over Nick’s whole upper body, growling happily every time he glances up to see that Juliette is holding Nick’s head back. Nick swallows, knowing it shows off the long line of his throat, and he hears another growl. He smirks. 

The next moment he’s helping Monroe work his shorts down, kicking them off as quickly as he can. Following Nick’s lead, Monroe shucks his shirt and jeans off the bed. Nick doesn’t think he imagines the tiny _rrrip_ he hears, Monroe’s claws tearing into fabric. He’s vindicated when Monroe puts a hand on his stomach -- Monroe’s claws are grown out, the backs of his hand furrier than normal. Even his face is wilder, his jaw stretching to become boxy and his teeth elongating. 

“Monroe,” Juliette says in quiet warning. “How are you feeling?” 

“Fine, totally -- fine,” he says, belying his physical changes.

“Go slowly,” Juliette reminds Monroe, voice calm and sure. It obviously has some effect on Monroe, because before Nick’s eyes fur becomes flesh and claws become fingernails, Monroe taking a more human aspect.

“You just,” Monroe says down to Nick, “you smell....”

“Dangerous?” Nick asks, remembering what Monroe had said only days before.

In response Monroe hums his agreement and trails a sharp nail over Nick’s chest, raising the skin there. After he’s done one long line from nipple to nipple, he pauses and looks at Nick. Monroe’s eyes are blown wide, deep with arousal. He taps once on Nick’s chest with a claw and a tiny bead of blood opens. 

“Color,” prompts Juliette. 

Nick spends a moment staring at the red dot, a welling of his life that could be splashed out before him if Monroe chose -- but it isn’t uncontrolled. Only sitting there, a reminder to Nick of the dangers inherent in what he’s doing, a fact that drives him higher and further.

“Green,” Nick replies, choked with arousal. 

At the permission Monroe’s claws come fully out, scrapping up and down Nick’s skin unforgivingly. They aren’t shredding him -- it doesn’t even hurt, mostly -- but they force Nick to be _present_ in a way he’s unused to. The slight burn of them on his stomach, his neck, his hips makes Nick that much more aware of Monroe’s fine control over his own power and over Nick himself. 

“Monroe, enough,” Nick gets out, bucking once into Monroe’s claws. For a wild second he wants to feel them pierce his flesh: a different kind of penetration -- but Monroe is too quick and anticipates the movement, turning his nails blunt at the last moment. 

“Do you want to stretch him?” Juliette asks from behind Nick. Nick hears her uncap their lube in preparation, and Monroe shakes his head, a surprise. 

“Not to scare anyone, but I’m not sure I should do that right now,” Monroe admits gruffly, looking at his own clawed hands. 

“Alright,” Juliette says with no judgement obvious. They rearrange so that she’s at Nick’s feet, leaning down over his spread legs. She’s pegged him before so the feeling isn’t completely new, and Nick finds himself opening up easily to her knowing fingers. The hot blaze that was Monroe is replaced by Juliette's warm brushes, Nick still aroused but in a way he knows well.

She curls her fingers inside of him. They usually play with smallish toys but tonight a real dick is going inside Nick – he'll have to be stretched well, sopping with lube if they can. Juliette takes to the challenge with a smile. Normally she'd be wicked while she's inside Nick, teasing him and making him groan for her, but today she seems to know that he needs her steady. Her touch isn't brusque by any means, but there’s also none of its usual playful bent. She's purposeful.

That doesn't stop Nick from groaning when she happens to brush his prostate. His legs jerk without his accord, and Juliette turns to Monroe with three fingers still in Nick. “Monroe, would you hold his legs back for me?” She sounds almost like she's asking Monroe to pass her a cup of tea.

Nick snorts and Juliette grins. “Anything to add, dear?”

Nick opens his mouth and she pushes in finger number four, turning his planned words into a yelp. 

“Is he -- ” starts Monroe.

“Almost,” Juliette replies, pumping into Nick. She takes her fingers out one at a time, letting him feel each one’s loss, an acute throb of nothingness. 

“Juliette,” Nick begs, twisting his head from side to side. 

The bed creaks when Monroe leans over and wipes Nick’s bangs from his forehead, and Juliette says with measured satisfaction, “He’s ready.”

Losing himself to the needful pulses and the muted sounds of bodies moving, Nick barely registers Juliette and Monroe switching positions, his legs being hefted up onto Monroe’s shoulders then bent to accommodate him. Hot breath blasts down the line of Nick’s calf as Monroe scents him there, Monroe’s twitching nose tickling the little hairs and soft skin. 

“Don’t fight me,” Monroe warns through his half-grown fangs. “You smell dangerous so don’t. Don’t fight.”

“I won’t,” Nick says on a frustrated groan, lifting his head up to watch where Monroe’s cock is so close to his slicked skin.

“Ready?” comes Juliette’s voice, and Nick is nodding, his heart speeding in his chest. He tries to relax himself, to focus on his breathing and not how close he is to being laid bare for both Juliette and Monroe. Juliette’s the only one who’s ever done this to him prior, but even as Monroe lines himself up with clawed fingers, Juliette is holding Nick’s hand on the bed, her voice coaxing him into a degree of acceptance, and Nick unravels inside. 

Monroe pushes in, first few inches steady. Nick’s grip on Juliette’s hand goes harsh but he knows this isn’t stopping; Monroe is only half human above him, seemingly incapable of holding back. 

The inevitability isn’t scary to Nick but relieving. He gives in and Monroe takes, making a place for himself inside. 

“Perfect, baby,” Nick hears Juliette say from somewhere far away. His thighs and quads are burning, Monroe a constant pressure on them, bending Nick in half with his thorough, slow thrusts.

The overhead fan circles slowly and Nick catches glimpses of it as it eyes flutter, his gaze lazily roving from Monroe to the ceiling and back. The whole bed rocks with each purposeful thrust, and Nick tries to imagine what he looks like: totally laid out and at another’s mercy, covered in beading lines of blood from claws. 

When Monroe pulls out it shocks a high groan from Nick, the sudden absence unforgivable. Before Nick can do anything about it, he’s being flipped onto his front, face crammed between Juliette’s legs and stomach pressed straight onto the bed.

He barely gets his legs apart before Monroe finds Nick’s hole and crams himself in, his pure strength overcoming any resistance Nick’s body can offer up.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Nick pants out in time with Monroe’s rapid, deep thrusts, so different from the earlier languid ones. 

“Up,” Monroes growls, hands around Nick’s waist, forcing him to cant his ass up and get onto his knees. The position ensures Monroe gets as deep as possible, until Nick’s head feels like it’s going to melt into the bedspread, his body only existing as a vessel for Monroe to fill and fill and fill. 

Juliette hushes praise down to Nick and runs her soft hands through his hair, ignoring the sweat that’s pouring from his body. Nick’s hard, he knows he is, but Monroe’s got him far enough off the bed that his dick’s getting no friction -- he’s just being slammed down, now more than ever, Monroe putting a clawed hand around his neck and _pushing_. 

All Nick can do is take.

They talked about how long Monroe can go, but it only becomes a reality after Nick realizes, _I’m going to come_ , and he does, right on Monroe’s cock without any help whatsoever -- and Monroe just fucks him through it. More lube splashes over Nick’s ass and he spares a thought for Juliette, watching this all, and then Monroe is sliding in faster than before. No more thoughts come.

He doesn’t arrive back on earth until Monroe’s laid out on top of him. The bed creaks as Monroe finds the best angle, stabbing down with no rhyme or reason.

“Ready?” Juliette asks, and Nick groans. A throbbing starts deep inside of him, and light smears of red from his sluggishly bleeding scratches color the sheets. He nods.

Being knotted is easily the strangest thing Nick’s ever felt. When Monroe finally finds the angle he wants, he sounds more animal than human, his shredded voice loud in Nick’s ear. It grows more slowly than Nick expected, but it does the job well: it forms inside Nick’s hole, forcing the tight band of muscle there wide and getting even bigger inside. It’s an effective plug. Nick whimpers at the thought, long past caring about the types of sounds coming out of his mouth.

A hand comes around Nick’s neck from the back, holding the vulnerable line of Nick’s throat until Nick goes boneless and submissive. A pleased growl echoes through the room. 

Nick can’t strictly feel the come that he knows must be splashing up inside of him, but after a few minutes he shifts. A vague discomfort radiates from his stomach, nothing unbearable yet but still strange -- a growing tightness. Wary, Nick fits a hand between his body and the bed to poke at his own abs.

It’s not all in his head. It’s barely noticeable but undeniably there: a tiny swelling right above his groin, a rearranging of his body. A warning cramp trembles through him and Nick moans in confused pain, pressing his face into the pillow below. 

“Shhh,” Monroe says, sounding like he’s speaking through fangs. Words are so often Monroe’s best tool in a world not made for him, and perhaps once Nick regains coherency he’ll realize how vulnerable Monroe seems without his verbosity to shield himself.

A hazy sort of completion filters through Nick’s sense of self, his head pressed to Juliette’s stomach, the skin he knows so well acting as a perfect anchor for the unknown at his back. It’s been months since he learned of his special affliction, since he learned of Monroe and the world of the inhuman, and he’s never felt so at ease with himself or his place. Juliette has him; she knows him in every way yet she’s still here, letting him have this, unafraid of what strangeness Nick attracts -- what strangeness he may indeed need. While she protects his front Monroe will protect his back, and the confirmed thrum of that knowledge lets Nick slip peacefully into a lazy sprawl of limbs.

\---

Nick couldn’t say how much time passes before Monroe slowly pulls out, leaving him empty and embarrassingly wet. A nose presses once above his entrance, Monroe’s wolfish noises of satisfaction just loud enough for Nick to hear over his own slowly pounding heart.

A rag cleans him up, gentle and insistent between his legs. Nick has no idea who is it; he didn’t notice when Juliette moved from his front. The awkward shuffle of steps at the side of the bed precedes Monroe sitting next to Nick and placing a fresh hand towel on his skin, the rubbing alcohol leaving a stinging trail over the scratches. Together Monroe and Juliette take care of him, cleaning him up as best they can with no shower. 

Halfway through Nick thinks to get up, but Monroe stops him, hand on Nick’s shoulder. 

“Relax,” he says, voice hoarse. “It’s all good.”

Nick lets Monroe push him down into the bed, let’s himself be handled and taken care of until it’s the three of them in bed together, Nick in the middle with Juliette at his front and Monroe at his back.

“That was good,” Juliette says, right before they all fall to a nap. “That was really good.”

\---

When Nick awakes, it’s to voices.

“So you think he’s alright?” 

“He seemed just fine. We’ll talk later like we planned, but I don’t think you need to be so worried, Monroe.’’

“It’s just we didn’t talk about the --- the claws. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“I heard ‘green’. You heard ‘green’. Nick knows himself and he knows us. He wouldn’t say yes if he didn’t mean it.”

Tired of their conversation already, Nick grumbles and sticks a hand out of the cocoon of the sheets. It lands on a hairy thigh. “Hushhh. Some people are still sleepin’.”

“It’s ten in the evening, babe.” Juliette pats his hand. “You need a shower and we’ve got to see Monroe out.”

Feeling a little like a kid whose (very x-rated) slumber party was just cut short, Nick groans. “Monroe can’t stay?”

At that Monroe snorts. “You’ve both got work tomorrow, as do I.”

“Rush order clock fixing?” Nick hides his teasing smile in the sheets.

“You joke, but true enthusiasts wait for no man.” Monroe pauses. “Or Blutbad.”

With a tired laugh Nick concedes the point and shuffles off for a quick shower, stepping in and toweling off all in five minutes. Perhaps it wasn’t the smartest idea to have their first time be Thursday night instead of a Friday, but if this is going to be a thing, it can’t be a weekend-only arrangement. Nick finished with those back in college.

He walks out of the steaming bathroom and pads down the hallway to the foyer, where Monroe’s wearing his sweater, all bundled up to go out into the perfectly warm night air. 

No one who didn’t know Monroe would be able to tell, but compared to earlier the tension’s been melted from his body, the gentle slope of his shoulders returned. He and Juliette speak quietly to each other, exchanging hugs and promises of a later meet up.

Wrapped in his towel, Nick insinuates himself into Monroe’s space after Juliette. 

Faced with a half-naked Nick, Monroe’s eyes go wide and a little glazed, and Nick takes advantage, pressing a kiss to Monroe’s lips. 

“We’ll talk this weekend,” he promises after. “All three of us.”

“Okay.” Monroe nods dumbly, then double-takes. “But if you’re not -- if you didn’t like any of -- “

“Monroe,” Nick says patiently. “It was great. This weekend, yeah?”

“Okay, okay, yeah.” Monroe nods and turns once, twice, looking for his car keys. Wearing an indulgent smile, Juliette jingles them in front of her. He finishes a third turn to grab them, flushing as he stumbles out the door and trips over a nonexistent rock on the stoop. From his car door he waves, and Nick waves back while Juliette blows a single kiss.

“This weekend, huh?” Juliette wonders, smile crinkling her face. 

“Looks like,” Nick replies amiably. He turns to rest his head on her shoulder. “Too tired now, but tomorrow I’m going to owe you a hell of an orgasm, aren’t I?”

Juliette shrugs. “Yes. But that’s not much different from the status quo, is it?” 

“No,” Nick agrees, wrapping her up in his arms. “I guess it isn’t.” 

 

 

(and the three of them lived happily ever after)


End file.
